To the Zoo! and back home with a lot of photos of the kids…

Sponsored by Nuffnang and BIG W

I haven’t been to the Melbourne Zoo in ages. I mean, I remember looking at the expectant elephant there and thinking…gosh, when she has her baby, my twins will be TWO! That seemed like ages and ages at the time, now I stood there this past weekend watching that two year old baby elephant play in the enclosure while my FOUR year old twins stood next to me. It is crazy how time seems to fly with certain memories.

 I went once in between that first visit and this Saturday’s trip, but clearly it is a special treat for our family. We have to cross the city to get there and it is an expense (kids are free on the weekends though!) The last two visits were with children who were just too small to get the most out of it, but this time was so different. All three of my kids were excited to be exploring and were really interacting with everything they experienced. It might be worth the journey and the money now to get yearly family memberships.

Since we did plan for the whole day out, I made sure we saw pretty much every animal on offer and had a go in the zoo playground as well as some hotdogs for lunch.
We had dressed the kids in their new BIG W outfits for this adventure, but the weather slipped back into chilly winter from the previous day’s springtime preview. The girls were so excited to wear their new BIG W outfits that had been laying out on their beds the whole week just waiting for this zoo trip, but I was worried they would be cold. They insisted on the outfits though (Clover: lavender ruffle dress $8.92 and heart leggings $7.96 / Gemma: yellow ruffle tank top $7.98, blue printed leggings $9.84 and skirt $7.96) so it was lucky I had picked up a few cold weather bargains in the clearance section when I was shopping for the kids. There was a hip oversized knit cardigan from the Pink Sugar range (sale $12) for Gemma and a fleece hoodie (sale $5) in Clover’s perfect shade of blue. Kieran just swapped out shorts for his bright tangerine colored pants that we already had bought from BIG W earlier, they went great with his new green thin striped t-shirt ($3) that he wore over a BIG W long sleeve white t-shirt (sale $3). Kieran likes to wear two shirts instead of a jacket…he calls it “doubleT”.

Each one of us had an animal agenda upon arrival. For me, it was the meerkats. Meerkats are just so ridiculously cute. Gemma wanted some penguin viewing, Clover was not going to miss the bears and Kieran had tigers on his mind. None of the children wanted to go into the butterfly enclosure. How I have managed to give birth to three kids who are all afraid of butterflies is beyond me. Of course being the perfect parent that I am, I MADE all of them go into the enclosure with me. Kieran and Gemma found the exit straight away, but Clover lingered just long enough to decide that they were OK. Only Alec was lucky enough to have butterflies actually land on him.

 When we left the zoo five hours after arriving, we had seen nearly every animal and even one unexpected one, a possum in a recycling bin.

The clothes fared extremely well despite the muddy conditions, one spectacular fall (seriously, why do kids always have to run right in FRONT of you?) and the tomato sauce incident at lunch time. All washed up beautifully and were back on again for kindergarten this past Monday.

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